Friday, March 27, 2015

In case you didn't know, the final Smackdown before WrestleMania is a bit different. The show is a mix of a few segments, WrestleMania video packages and highlights from Axxess. Renee Young and Byron Saxton host. We open with a Fatal Four Way match to build towards the Tag Team Title match at WrestleMania. One member of each team competed as Fernando, Cesaro, Jimmy Uso and Big E went at it. Despite only being given about five minutes, this was a lot of fun. They busted out some creative moves and made sure the match moved fast and never got dull. Jimmy wins after a big splash in a fun choice to open. Now we to kill time with a ton of build up videos for WrestleMania. We see Brock Lesnar announcing that he's re-signing with the WWE, a hype video for his match with Roman Reigns, build for the Intercontinental Title and Randy Orton/Seth Rollins matches before finally moving back to the arena.

AJ Lee skips out to the ring to discuss her issues with Paige following Raw. She says that both her and Paige love the Divas Title, so the Bellas wisely used that to cause friction. This brings out Paige who says that she still doesn't trust AJ. AJ calls the Bellas the Kardashians, which brings them out. The Bellas, not Kim or Kourtney. Nikki fires some shots at AJ for taking vacations this year, even claiming Brock Lesnar has worked more dates than her. Nikki was great here but Brie sucked. Paige and AJ basically claimed they are more real than the Bellas and they're proud. Nikki called them bitches and it added some fuel to the WrestleMania match. I hope they are given a good amount of time and get to have a good outing.We move to more build for WrestleMania, namely the big Tripe H vs. Sting match. Then we get stuff for Bray Wyatt vs. the Undertaker. Our final segment for Smackdown is an eight man tag match. They try to build it as a big deal but it's pretty random. John Cena, Daniel Bryan, Roman Reigns and Mark Henry take on Seth Rollins, Kane, Big Show and Bray Wyatt. I hate the idea of Bray teaming with the Authority. The match got about twenty minutes and was fun. My only real issue with it besides Bray being out of pace is that he was made to look weak against Roman Reigns. I totally understand that Roman needed to look good here heading into Mania, but so did Bray. At least he didn't get pinned, but still, that was a bad move. After a flurry of finishers, Bryan is able to get the pin for his team.It's hard to fully rate this Smackdown since so little actually happened. The Axxess stuff gives it a different feel, but it's too similar to the WrestleMania Today stuff that was on the Network earlier in the day. The actual Smackdown stuff was good. A solid main event, fun Four Way and great Divas segment make this show a thumbs up. 6.5/10